Iconic LA landmarks built on top of fault lines, according to new earthquake map

New maps released by the California Geological Survey are concerning residents in the southern part of the state who just now are being told that thousands of properties across Los Angeles and Hollywood are erected near newly discovered fault lines.

The CGS unveiled the preliminary copies of the maps — the first
ones released by the agency in nearly two decades — earlier this
year in January. According to a new analysis by journalists at
the Los Angeles Times published this week,
however, the earthquake experts believe a bit more of Southern
California is susceptible to a major quake that once imagined.

Later this year the CGS will decide if it wants to officially
approve the newest maps. If ongoing research indicates then that
the recent drafts are accurate, though, then much of LA and
Hollywood will turn out to have been built atop fault lines
absent from earthquake reports until now.

“The mapped fault lines cut through more than 1,500 developed
properties, according to a Times analysis of maps of the
Hollywood fault and the Sierra Madre and Duarte faults in the
northern San Gabriel Valley,” reporter Rong-Gong Lin II
wrote on Tuesday this week for the newspaper.

According to the Times’ analysis, preschools, senior housing
centers, luxury hotels and one of the largest housing
developments in San Gabriel Valley have all been built either on
or near the new lines. While maybe 1,500 developed properties are
directly on the faults, the Times believes a total of 12,000
properties are within only 500-feet of being right on top of
where subterranean tectonic plates meet.

If January’s maps are approved, then a long-standing California
zoning law — the Alquist-Priolo Earthquake Fault Zoning, or AP,
Act — will prohibit future construction along the faults unless
builders pay for underground seismic testing.

“The intent of the AP Act is to ensure public safety by
prohibiting the siting of most structures for human occupancy
across traces of active faults that constitute a potential hazard
to structures from surface faulting or fault creep,” the
California Department of Conservation says on its official website.

But until now, the CGS has not had any new maps outlining exactly
what parts of the state are affected by the AP act. If further
testing allows the agency to adopt the newest maps, then the
owners of thousands of properties that already exist in the
region will have to determine what they want to do about it.

"There's a lot of unanswered questions," Jaime
Edwards-Acton, the senior pastor at St. Stephen's, told the
Times. "We have to figure out: Do we have to change
anything?"

Others, like Group Delta consulting CEO Mike Reader, are already
asking questions as a result of the Times report. Speaking to the
Daily Mail this week, Reader said his group
has carried out tests in the area contained in the CGS maps and
found no evidence of fault lines.

“The big question is, is the map right - and that's still an
open question,” he told the Daily Mail this week.

“There is a possibility that the map could be approved with
the wrong information,” he added. “They need to withhold
finalization of the map until more information is
available.”

According to the Times, other properties that could be affected
include the iconic Capitol Records tower in Hollywood, as well as
landmark Sunset Strip hotels including the Mondrian, the Sunset
Tower and the Standard.

The Standard “will take necessary precautions to ensure the
safety of their guests, which could potentially include
structural assessment or seismic investigation," spokeswoman
Kaitlin Kominsky told the LA Times.

Around two-thousand miles of California still needs to be mapped
out, the paper added, including regions of LA County's Westside,
Orange County, Pasadena, Lake Tahoe and the San Diego and San
Francisco Bay areas which may turn out to be susceptible to
earthquakes.